Shipbucket

lovely.

Nice!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Excellent work!

The End:
Around 1943 more and more ships were assigned to escort duty. Training duties by this point had been taken over by the actual warships, so Drache could be used on the front lines, although she was still officially classified as a training boat. Drache was assigned to the 3. Sicherungsflotille (3rd escort flotilla) and stationed in Gotenhafen. At first, her primary duties were minesweeping, but also anti-air patrol. In the end of July 1944 Drache escorted the passenger liner General von Steuben to Riga to aid with the evacuation of the enclused soldiers and refugees. On the way there Drache ran aground on a sand bank, but managed to get free. Once in Riga, the crew helped with the loading of the over 4000 wounded on General von Steuben. On the way back, Drache detected a submarine (presumably Shch-310, Shch-318 or Shch-407) and managed to drive it away (or destroy it) with her waterbombs. General von Steuben and Drache returned to Gotenhafen without further incident.

In 1945 the situation had turned desperate. On 09.02.1945, Drache recieved a radio that a large passanger liner had been attacked and sunk. Drache, herself transporting around 200 refugees at the time, turned around to aid. This liner had been the General von Steuben, attacked and sunk near the same place where the famous Wilhelm Gustloff had been sunk just ten days prior. Out of the 4000 people on board, only 660 could be rescued, but Drache could only pick up dead bodies. After finding out the identity of the sunken liner, the crew of Drache was hit hard, after having escorted the ship safely the year before. In January 1945 Operation 'Westwind' began near Königsberg, one of the last offensives of the Wehrmacht, aided by heavy naval artillery support, including Admiral Hipper, Admiral Scheer and several smaller ships, including Drache. Drache and two so-called Schwere Artillerieträger (SAT; heavy artillery transporter, modifed coastal freighters) could enter the coastal channals and provide support from a shorter distance. Drache was credited with the destruction of four tanks, several trucks and one plane. For the next months Drache continued her artillery support, not only around Königsberg, but also Danzig and Gotenhafen.

At the end of March 1945 Drache participated in Operation 'Großendorf': Without any lights, Drache and a high sea tug towed a freighter into the harbor entrance of Großendorf, near Hela. This fishery harbor was close to be taken over by the Soviets and could have been used as a submarine harbor. In the entrance of the harbor the crew on the freighter sunk the ship and evacuated to the tug and retreated safely. The sucess of this Operation is unknown, but the harbor would have been blocked for submarines for the next time. After that, Drache returned to the chanal around Königsberg to provide artillery support. The characteristically high mast of Drache made it unfortunately very easy for the Soviets to spot the ship, so it had to be cut down. This eased the situation a bit, but around the 7th to 8th April of 1945 Drache enterd the Schichau shipyards in Königsberg for repairs. As soon as some of the crew had left the boat, they spotted Soviet soldiers and came under fire from artillery pieces. Drache took several hits: One in the bridge, heavily wounding the Captain, one in the radio room, killing the radio operator and one on the foredeck. The 37mm twin had tried to defend the ship and had taken a direct hit, ripping the gun overboard and killing the enite gun crew, probably four to five men. Additionally, Drache was hit several times below the waterline. The ship immediately retreated form Königsber to Pillau via a chanal. Here, again under heavy artillery fire, repairs were made, but the 37mm twin was not replaced, a fact that would haunt the ship later. Only two days later, Drache returned to combat, this time defending the evacuation of Pillau, together with two, later five SAT.

On 18.04.1945, while guarding the harbor of Pillau, the six ships came under attack by Soviet Il-2 fighters. It was a cloudy day and the enemy planes were barely visible. The SAT Robert Müller 6 was the first victim and sunk around 12:30. An hour later the planes returned and attacked again. The 105mm cannons only had an elevation angle of 70° and were of limited use. The 20mm quad proved useless against the armor of the Il-2. The 37mm twin would have been able to pierce that armor, although if it had made a difference remains another question for history. Drache was hit by two 250kg bombs and her whole side open. Drache sank quickly and the surviors were taken by another SAT. They were brought to Hela where they were greeted by a former Captain of Drache, who showed pity with the men and had them evacuated to the west, instead of having them split up and trasferred to other ships. The wreck was discovered in 2009 by Russian divers.


And this concludes this little story. As usual, all pictures and history will be collected in the first post over the next few days. Maybe it'll even get posted for the next upload session...

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My worklist
Any help and source material is always welcome.

Excellent drawings and history of this gallant little boat. It certainly led a fascinating career.

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Republic of Lisenia AU - In progress
Republic of Lisenia in FD Scale - In progress

Very nice work!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Awesome work!

On a note - for other readers - DG_Alpha in His description used names of the cities as they were used by the Germany at the time of the described events. Nowadays Gotenhafen is Gdynia (note that it's nazi-used name of the city, as historical German name of it is Gdingen), Königsberg is Kaliningrad, Danzig is Gdańsk (Poland), Großendorf is Władysławowo, Hela is Hel, Pillau is Bałtyjsk (Baltiysk). Kalinigrad and Baltiysk are in Russia (Kaliningrad Exclave), while remaining ones in Poland.

Thank you for pointing out the alternative names. I think I'll include them in the final description.

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Very informative, DG. One remark though, on your dating: try to avoid numeric dating, since many Americans are unfamiliar with the way we Europeans write our dates; I e day - month - year. The US system denotes month - day - year. So, you could write either February 2, 1945 or 2 February, 1945, thus clarifying the chronology. It's not really a criticism, but rather a tip how to handle the tricky datum writing.

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

@DG_Alpha
No particular need to. At the time they were referred to by these names - certainly by the crews of these ships.
That would be very different if You were using these names to these cities in today's context - but that's not the case here.